Forray into Naxxramas
by child-dragon
Summary: Warraven, tauren shaman, joins with the Horns of Shu'halo to launch an attack on Naxxramas.


Warraven fell. It was too much for her mind to handle and things faltered. She could smell the stink of her own sweat, clinging to her rough hide and the worn leather and links of her armor. For a moment, it was all she could take in, and in that moment she knew she was going to die.

The Horns of the Shu'halo had not undertaken this lightly. For weeks prior the others had looked over drawings she did not understand and writing she could not read so that they knew what their brethren were going to face. The Argent Dawn's seal resided on most of the papers, others were from the rest of the Horde that had already breached Naxxramas and made it back out alive. Their reports were disheartening.

"Everyone has only managed a hit and run," Plavien had said as the small group readied themselves at Venomspite. The druid paced before the group, grim, uncompromising with his words. "I do not expect us to do more than the same. The Scourge do not stay dead easily and even if we manage to locate one of their leaders there is no guarantee we will do more than grant a reprieve. We will have time to infiltrate, tear a path into the depths, kill what we can, and then get out before the might of what is contained within is unleashed. We do not stay in one spot for long. We move fast."

He closed his eyes for a moment and stopped pacing.

"We leave no one behind. Everyone here will walk the plains of Mulgore once more."

The assembled tauren had rumbled their agreement. Warraven caught sight of the Forsaken nearby, watching with blank expressions, any thoughts of the gathering concealed behind dead eyes. She shuddered. It was growing harder to accept them for what they were, after seeing the taint over Northrend. After Wrathgate. After the Death Knights…

There was a reason she was standing on the other end of the group, conveniently as far away from Icehourn as she could manage and not be obvious about her distrust.

And so they had hit Naxxramas hard and fast, their mounts swarming up to the underbelly of the monster, sweeping in before the frost wyrms had time to react. Warraven had fought grimly, her prejudices forgotten at the severity of their situation, her weapons moving in tangent with the Death Knights among them. There was the comforting presence of the other shamans as well, and the quiet hand of the druids. They burned like candles with the sheer life emanating from their magic, a hateful thing to the tainted inhabitants of Naxxramas. And Warraven wove her dance among them, will of the spirits, breath of the sky, the fierce destruction of the wildfire.

Her hooves scraped against the stone, sliding on the slick floor. The remnants of the liquid poison hissed on her armor, bit into her skin like so many gnats. A thin red haze covered her vision and her mind was dulled by the fear.

It never leaves you, she had said. It just changes form.

A hand seized the back of her armor and pulled. She curled into a ball as Kwam almost threw her back into the group and the boiling slime erupted from the cracks in the floor where she had just been. Her helm strap snapped from the sudden impact and fell away, the long strands of hair escaping. The ankh she had woven into the braid tinked as it bounced on the stone.

They had been expected. Heigen had been waiting for them to walk into his trap. She smelled the foulness as soon as they entered and he turned burning eyes towards them. The stench of death stung in her nostrils but even the necromancer was overshadowed by the bitterness that wafted up from the floor. She did not have to be a shaman to tell the earth had been tainted here. Her brothers and sisters sensed it too and they shifted uneasily. The rattle of weapons and the beat of her own heart was all she could hear for a moment. Then Kwam had roared and the might of the Shu'halo pitted itself against the might of the Scourge, so very far from home.

Two already had been lost. Each tauren there could smell the poison and so they ran from spot to spot, relying on each other's senses to guide the rest to the next safe spot. And the necromancer just continued to channel his trap. When one of their number had fallen – engulfed in the fire – he had only breathed a quiet reassurance that death was right… that it was expected… and the fear in Warraven echoed the sentiment. Just stop. Hold still, wait a moment, and it would all be over. Sleep.

She had forced herself to look where the tauren's body lay, contorted in agony, the limbs wasted from the poison that burned away at the flesh, striping away skin and muscle almost to the bone. They could bring him back. The spirit would cling to the flesh, wrecked as it was, until it gave up hope or until someone reached out into the incorporeal and guided him back into his body. But that could not be done unless they had rid the place of the necromancer's taint. And so she fought.

The necromancer blinked out, engulfed in arcane light, and appeared just a pace from her. She reeled, trying to drag herself backwards even as he raised his staff. It descended and she did not flinch, bracing herself for the impact that never came. The weapon instead smashed against a shield. The warrior among them did not say anything, just braced himself and pressed the necromancer back, pitting his weight against Heigen's unnatural strength. For her part, Warraven tried to stay still. Part of finding his stance had meant putting his hoof somewhere around the shaman's sternum. She was finding it difficult to breath, but a moment's discomfort was trivial compared to what he was holding back.

Then the weight was gone, he shoved Heigen away, and Warraven rolled and scrambled to her feet, her mace still at hand. She cried out, a wordless battle cry, defiance to both the Scourge and her own fear, and flanked the necromancer, Kwam on the other side, his axes falling like boulders. Behind them the poison erupted once more and flecks of it landed on her back.

She swung the mace low, her legs guiding her hips, her arm merely an extension of the movement to add the weight of the mace's head into the blow. Draw strength up from the earth. Ground the hooves, drink in the fluidity of water, and release the movement in a short snap of the wrist that pulled it all together. The mace slowed as it impacted the necromancer's robes, and came away with more blood. It was viscous, dark, and unnatural.

They continued to force the necromancer back across the room. He did not seem to notice – or mind – and all around them the poison fire burst through the cracks.

Warraven barely noticed when he fell. Her muscles were reacting on instinct and her mace descended even after the ground grew quiet and the necromancer fell to the ground. It hit rock and she blinked, backed away in a daze. Icehourn chuckled but said nothing and Warraven rolled her tongue around her gums, tasting the blood that had built up, and spat it out onto the ground.

"A reprieve," Plavien said, "Maybe we'll get lucky and this will stick."

He moved to call their fallen brethren back. Warraven just stared at the body, trying to get some sense of it, trying to see if the spirit lingered. Could a necromancer be killed? Hadn't she seen them perform feats not unlike her own trick of binding the soul to a token of power, to guide it back even after she had fallen? She stepped back, absently casting about for where her helm had fallen.

"Three minutes," Kwam rumbled, "Heal your wounds. Then we keep moving. We have no time to linger."

It went unspoken that if Heigen had expected them there was no telling what else had been warned of their intrusion. Warraven grimly replaced the helm, pushing her braids back, and used the short break to cut a new strip of leather to hold the broken strap in place. She would fix it properly later.

Fear had settled somewhat, gnawing at her insides from some dark corner of her mind. She steadfastly ignored it. It had made her falter. When she lost her balance and fell her spirit had given up. Sleep. She had hesitated and if not for Kwam… she looked away at the ceiling.

She would not hesitate again. And her hand tightened on the grip of the mace.

She was Shu'halo.


End file.
